Dark Dreams
by SophieSaulie
Summary: Another hellish night for Dean. A kind of tag to Sex and Violence.


**Dark Dreams**

Pain. It was all he was aware for a second, searing, cutting, unrelenting pain. He was afraid to open his eyes to see what was causing it. He could feel himself stiffen, writhe, and jerk with every cut, the weapon in deft surgical hands, but surgery wasn't the goal. There was no life saving skill in those hands. He heard himself moan, groan, even cry out when he couldn't hold back any more. He could also hear back his own echo, a reverberation of his own suffering, among the many surrounding him. He wasn't alone, but the thought provided no comfort. The company he kept were others in similar or worse torment than himself and though he thought he should have lost the drive there, deep within him, he still felt the need to help those lost voices, those other echoes that were in harmony with his own. He struggled to be released from his bonds as much to be able to help those voices as to escape his own imprisonment. He felt his mind telling him, "you can save them", but warring with that instinct was a darker more sinister influence saying, "you're like them".

In his mind, he desperately tried to invoke some kind of meditative state, to drive his thoughts away from where he was to where he wanted to be. It would help for a time, but it was never long enough, the sensation of the razor unmistakable, the pain that followed familiar and inevitable. It was a diabolical routine that he had yet to learn to accept, but had already learned to expect.

Still, he tried to escape, to drown out the screaming, the pain. In life, he was able to hide his pain, both physical and emotional. He was an expert, a veteran of the river in Egypt…denial. Sometimes he'd find himself smiling and his tormentor would ask him what he was smiling about. He took satisfaction at keeping the tormentor guessing. There were few satisfactions he could cling to there so he took what he could. Sometimes he would find himself adrift with the pain, floating on a numbness that sometimes, if only seconds worth, would take him back to when he was four years old. The madness of that lovely hallucination was enough sometimes to keep him away long enough to actually feel like he was there. The warmth of his mother's embrace, the soothing hum of her voice as she sang a favorite lullaby, it lulled him. Then she would whisper, "I love you, Dean" and he could feel wet tears run down his cheeks. The tormentor probably believed he was the cause. Let him think that, he thought. It would be his little secret that those were tears of joy, not pain.

He would remember the strong arms of his father, lifting him into the air with ease, hearing himself giggle with the flight. He would remember his father's smile at seeing his wife, holding their infant son, his baby brother, in her arms. It was a smile he would never see again. The tormentor may think he was the ultimate inflictor of pain, but he knew he was wrong. There was self-inflicted pain from a lifetime lost that was far more harrowing and heartbreaking.

Sam. He would try his hardest to remember Sam, not the Sam he had left behind to be the prey of Ruby, but the Sam he had taken care of all his life without regret. The baby who had never known sadness until he was old enough to question why his family wasn't like the others. Why he didn't have a mother, why he had a father who would sneak off into the dark nights, returning battered, bruised and bloodied. He loved his brother. Nothing that was being exacted on him would ever make him question all he had done for his brother. It had been worth it. Sam was alive and safe.

Suddenly a voice drifted into the illusion he was trying to maintain. He didn't recognize it at first. It was deep, menacing, cold, threatening, yet there was something familiar about it. He should know this voice, but something in him told him that he didn't want to know the voice, that knowing it's owner would only bring him pain and disappointment, but he couldn't block it out. He heard it becoming clearer, more distinct. Then he heard what it was saying.

_"You're not standing in my way anymore."_

Dean then felt himself jerk awake. He was disoriented at first, breathing hard, but when he turned around he saw the empty bed next to his and realized that Sam had gone out with Ruby again. That he was all alone. As alone as he had been in Hell.

After everything that had been said, Sam's insistence that he hadn't mean what he had said, it had equated to nothing. His little brother, the one whose memory he had invoked into his consciousness as often as he could when he was in Hell to keep his sanity, was still choosing to be with Ruby, to do whatever dark magic she had taught him while Dean had been away. Dean sat on his bed, deflated. How would he be able to compete with the taste of power that Sam had experienced? Its pull was either as strong as or maybe even driven by the demon blood from inside him. What could Dean offer Sam that would be as enticing? If their brotherhood wasn't enough anymore, Dean was at a loss. Still, like in Hell, the instinct to save those clamoring, pain-filled voices he had heard, knowing that they were beyond his reach, was even stronger for Sam. He felt fierce feelings of love and resolve that it wasn't too late, that he wasn't too late to save Sam. The will was there and the answers though elusive for now, he knew were there too, he just had to find them, find his way back to Sam. The Sam he knew wasn't gone. He had been wrong about that and if he could be wrong, so could Sam.

To believe anything else would break him in ways that Hell never could.

**FIN. Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed the story!**


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